El círculo del diablo

In the last of three serials that John Wayne did making his bones in B picture Hollywood, he does what is described as a modern adaption of Alexander Dumas's classic The Three Musketeers. Any resemblance to that novel and this film is completely coincidental.

Wayne is an American pilot who is flying in North Africa and saves Jack Mulhall, Francis X. Bushman, Jr. and Raymond Hatton, Foreign Legionaires, from certain death by machine gunning from the air an attacking Berber tribe. The group of them strike up a great friendship and the three decide to call themselves The Three Musketeers and adopt Wayne as their D'Artagnan.

The Duke with that little action apparently messed up a planned revolution against the colonial occupiers so the would be revolutionaries frame him for gun running and later murder. It takes twelve chapters for Wayne to clear himself and unmask the mysterious masked leader of the Devil's Circle conspiracy, El Shaitan.

In the mess of a film where not one of the white dudes speak with any kind of an accent including the multi-national Foreign Legionaires, you can see elements of The Desert Song, Gunga Din, and Beau Geste. But other than the title not a hint of The Three Musketeers.

Lon Chaney, Jr. and Noah Beery, Jr. both make brief appearances in The Three Musketeers and both get killed early on in the serial. I'm sure neither of them counted this serial as anything they talked up in reminiscing about their careers.

Only confirmed and solid fans of John Wayne should watch this film. I can safely say that Alexander Dumas's spirit becomes most restless when this film is shown.

And an updating of sorts of the Dumas novel, from Mascot Pictures and directors Colbert Clark and Armand Schaefer. The "musketeers" are soldiers in the French Foreign Legion: Clancy (Jack Mulhall), Renard (Raymond Hatton), and Schmidt (Francis X. Bushman Jr.). They are stationed in North Africa where they battle frequent Arab uprisings. During one such battle they are saved by American military pilot Tom Wayne (John Wayne). When Tom is later framed for murder by the insidious "El Shaitan", mysterious leader of the Devil's Circle, the three legionnaires promise to help Wayne is whatever way they can, leading to much high-flying mayhem, desert sands survival, and dangerous shoot-outs.

Despite the title, this is much more Wayne's show than the three legionnaires. Wayne is good at the action scenes, even if his character should be a complete wreck by the end, after multiple fist-fights, falls from great heights, and even being shot a few times. Both Chaney and Beery Juniors have early roles, and it was fun seeing them so young. The story gets repetitive (a drawback for many lesser serials), and I would have liked the three musketeers to have been featured more. The masked bad guy El Shaitan was physically performed by Yakima Canutt with a voice dub from Charles Middleton.

Movie serials aren't sophisticated entertainment and they are jam-packed with contradictory scenes (such as SEEING a hero get blown up in one episode, only to see in the second episode that he SOMEHOW escaped) and inconsistencies. They were hastily made and quality was NOT a huge concern. That being said, I do enjoy many serials and could recommend a few...just not "The Three Musketeers"!

Despite the name, the serial is about the French Foreign Legion back around 1933. It begins with three soldiers and friends about to be killed by renegades...only to be saved by Tom Wayne (John Wayne) and his airplane. However, soon you realize that almost everyone in the story is extremely stupid...too stupid. When a turncoat is killed by the evil El Shaitan, very badly fabricated evidence is planted implicating Tom for the killing. And, despite his service record AND how bad and unconvincing the evidence is AND that Tom was close friends with the dead guy, suddenly an arrest warrant is issued for him AND the dead man's sister (who is also Tom's girlfriend) suddenly believes Tom is evil and sets out to kill him. Oddly, when she finally catches up to him, he convinces her in about 2 seconds he didn't kill her brother...and she believes it! Huh?! Did the woman have an unsuccessful brain transplant and this might explain her changing her opinions so quickly? And what about the officers in the Legion? Could they be half as stupid as the film portrays them to be?

The bottom line is that apart from a few nice action scenes, to believe the story you must assume everyone is an imbecile...otherwise the story makes no sense. Very bad writing, limp acting and indifferent direction make this a hard serial to finish...and even for the genre it's incredibly weak and unenjoyable.

By the way, many years later this 12-part serial was edited into an incomprehensible mess called "Desert Command". It never makes any sense as most of the film is missing...but it's really no worse than seeing this serial...especially since the heavily trimmed film is so much shorter in duration.

After John Wayne's character tells his three musketeer friends he can't go with them, he tells them he's promised "Ruth Corday" he'd come back to marry her. He should have said "Elaine" Corday, the correct name for the character. Wayne obviously mixed up the first name of the actress ("Ruth" Hall) with the first name of the character she plays. He does, however, get her name correct in the rest of the film. I only noticed this goof since I am big on details, names and such and just happened to catch the error. Wayne, otherwise can do no wrong. It is always worth seeing him in his early days of film. Action-packed hero whether in the desert, like in this picture, or on the Western trail, he's always the hero.

An old creaker of a 12 chapter Foreign Legion serial actually puts John Wayne in the forefront of the action despite having him appear only fourth in the credits. The production standards of course were nothing to write home about then and are certainly slapdash now but the action has some nifty inventive moments and it was all shot on location which was a big plus. The good natured comraderie between the "musketeers" was definitely used as a prototype for Gunga Din, made six years later by RKO. Some notable appearances by Noah Beery Jr, Lon Chaney and Yakima Canutt will interest film historians and the adventure is entertaining enough even if you can't get through all the chapters in one sitting. Not the greatest old-time serial ever made I'm sure but I'll watch John Wayne in anything and the DVD was worth the purchase.